Options for marriage data
Comments
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Ron Tanner said: The tree should reflect what is genealogically accurate. Since these types of relationships are not genealogically right they should be removed. The temple ordinances are independent.0
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Lynne VanWagenen said: I agree with Ron. Make the relationships in tree genealogically sound. Delete the sealing only relationships, and let the temple records serve their purpose in preserving what ordinances were done.
Internally, we are still working on getting everyone aligned with how the data in the tree should be corrected and dealt with.0 -
Lynne VanWagenen said: I think in NFS we saw the problems created by these sealing only relationships. People showed up in wrong families. In some cases the relationships are completely illogical, with people sealed to people who didn't even live during their lifetimes. It makes for a very messy and confusing tree.0
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Jade said: Richard, you said "In the pedigree, a genealogist is not interested in what other couple relationships there might have been before or after a birth, unless another child is born. All kinds of things can happen between the births of children, including divorce, death, separation, infidelity, adoption, and many others. Attempting to record all but a very few of those relationships is not in the purview of genealogists . . . ."
All of those and much more are of interest to genealogists. The key to your statement is "in the pedigree."
It's just fine if you are interested only in your pedigree, but many of us are interested in life-paths of our relatives including neighborhoods, occupations, moves with kin and neighbors, material culture (estate personal property inventories are for me an endlessly illuminating), how historical events influenced their lives, and related angles.
So a great many of us want as much sophisticated detail as can reasonably be put in a tree format, recognizing that trees are still extremely limited views.0 -
Ron Tanner said: The purpose of my comments are to say that we believe the model will represent relationships that are needed. Whether every relationship along a person's path is represented it up to the person researching the ancestor. There are reasons to enter it that will help in finding records as a person's relationship changes over time.
Also realize that we now have preferred parents and preferred spouse to allow you control what relationships you see in the pedigree.0 -
Richard Rands said: Ah, the first clue comes out as to why you have created this concept. You want people to do more than build a tree. You want to build a browser-based system that will have one's entire family history online. I have been working in genealogy for over 50 years, and it is clear to me that few people are willing to put their personal family history into a database format. People write their history as a narrative. I have also been in the software business for nearly 40 years and know that it is naive to think that a user interface can be created simple enough to entice people to use it for that purpose. As one who is responsible for teaching hundreds of people how to use your system, you have done me (and many others) a huge disservice. Our time for doing produtive research will be significantly reduced because we have to spend our time helping our patrons unravel the mistakes made. Just like new.familysearch impacted us. We all hoped you would learn lessons from past mistakes. I contend that you are making family history an unpleasant experience and driving people away.
Richard Rands0 -
Ron Tanner said: Help me understand "Our time for doing produtive research will be significantly reduced because we have to spend our time helping our patrons unravel the mistakes made."
Are you referring to having to fix incorrect relationships?
I have never said that a person must enter any and all relationships that may exist. I only said that one can. What mistake are we making that will drive people away?0 -
Venitar said: I think this discussion has gone off toward Joneses!. The bottom line questions are simple.
A child was born. Were his/her parents married to each other at the time? The answer is yes or no.
A child lives to be an adult. Did he/she marry? The answer is yes or no. Did he/she produce any children? Again, yes or no. If the answer is yes, who was the other parent and were they married to each other at the time?
These questions apply to earthly relationships.
Sacred sealings do not always indicate earthly relationships. Example, my ancestor was born out of wedlock. His parents did not marry (they lived on different continents), though they each married others. He was raised by his grandparents, but was sealed to his biological parents as their child, and they were sealed as a couple. A well-meaning relative added a supposed marriage date for this couple, a date which could never be confirmed because there was no marriage. Had the relationship been noted as "not married," or something similar, it would have saved years of unfruitful research.0 -
markshepherd said: Venitar made two excellent points. First it would be helpful to know if a couple who produced a child were not married/did not have a common law relationship. Family Tree currently does not have a way to distinguish this from a couple who had a child and were married ( or common law marriage)but nobody has documented the marriage or common law relationship. As Venitar stated this could cause someone else to spend many hours trying to find a record of marriage that does not exist. Second, it would also be beneficial to know if a person who lived to adulthood died without ever marrying or having a common law "marriage"or producing children. This would also prevent others from spending a lot of time trying to find information that does not exist.0
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Jade said: Richard, you said "Our time for doing produtive research will be significantly reduced because we have to spend our time helping our patrons unravel the mistakes made. Just like new.familysearch impacted us. We all hoped you would learn lessons from past mistakes. I contend that you are making family history an unpleasant experience and driving people away."
It is indeed regrettable that n.FS and the FS-Family Tree are compiled from databases containing millions of genealogical mistakes. This is the result of compiling half-baked genealogical material of both distant and recent past.
FS-Family Tree does have a framework in which it is much easier to see errors and to make repairs. By and large it is not also a database that can serve to ~do~ family research (i.e., find one's family ancestry already worked out), although this seems to be the thinking of many who delve into it.0 -
Venitar said: I like that we can modify or delete relationships in Family Tree, and I suggest some further options. As of now, even when a couple relationship is deleted and a "marriage" date is removed, they are still shown together. Please allow the couple to truly be dissolved when there was no kind of earthly couple relationship between them.
In parent/child relationships, there is only the option to delete the child relationship from both parents together. There are many cases where one of the "parents" was truly a parent, but the other had no relationship to the child - think polygamy, for example. Please allow the child to be deleted from the relationship with each parent individually.0 -
joe martel said: In FamilyTree you can remove a Couple relationship by hitting the View link at the bottom right hand corner of the couple's box. This will take you to the couple relationship and you can then Delete Relationship from the upper right hand link.
For the second situation involving a child, move to the right hand side of the child's relationship box under the couple. A View link will appear. Click on that, and you will go to the parent-child relationship page. Once there you can edit/delete the father or mother conclusion.
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Jade said: Venitar, you said "As of now, even when a couple relationship is deleted and a "marriage" date is removed, they are still shown together. Please allow the couple to truly be dissolved when there was no kind of earthly couple relationship between them."
You may be seeing a 'safety hold' when one or more children are attached to the persons whose couple-relationship has been deleted. If you don't click the arrow below the couple you may not be aware that a child was attached.
The solution is to move the children to the correct parental configuration, if you can figure it out, and then delete the children from the incorrect parental pair.
I just finished sorting out such a situation only because I was well familiar with the families involved: some submitter had attached a man as husband to his probable paternal grandmother, who was given the speculative maiden name usually attached to her in trees. Attached to them as a child was the same man's mother, with her married surname instead of her birth surname (and with an illogical birth date for a child of the wrongly configured couple). The core mistake was that the man was named for his maternal grandfather (who was, say, Joe Bill Smith, while the problem man was Joe Bill Jones). The submitter in this case attached spouse and child to Joe Bill Jones when they belonged to Joe Bill Smith.
Once you have removed all children from the wrong pair, the wrong couple should disappear as a pair, and the page for each person should no longer show this wrong marriage. One should be praying that no duplicates for these people were migrated from n.FS to FS-Tree, and always check on this issue via a search. For the above instance I worked on, in FS-Family Tree there are at least three instances of Joe Bill Jones, at least 2 of Joe Bill Smith, at least 2 of Joe Bill Jones' actual mother, and at least 3 of Joe Bill Jones' maternal grandmother, each described in slightly different ways depending on what the submitters were copying from or invented.
Thus there might be one or more of the same person from AF, one or more from PRF and one or more from IGI. This is the basic reason n.FS is such a mess.0 -
joe martel said: THanks for your response Jade. It's right on.0
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Venitar said: Thanks, Jade and Joe! There was a link there that I hadn't seen before. I'm good now!!0
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Jade said: Joe, thanks for the useful illustrations. I would add that it's also necessary to actually click on a parent's name to even see the individual remove/change options. To change, it is necessary already to know who the correct parent is (if you have the PID it is easiest, since the search engine is still retrieving n.FS data rather than FS-FamilyTree data). And if both are incorrect it is easiest to first move the child via the page for one of the correct parents, add to the correct marriage, then delete the child from the incorrect parental pair, as you show above.0
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Jade said: Venitar, you are always good! It's just that there are crucial links that are hidden or obscurely labeled. Let us hope that Keep It Simple, Make It Transparent (KISMIT) will govern site fixes in the future.0
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Venitar said: Love the KISMIT!0
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Venitar said: Here's the thing. (I'm not using the real names here, fyi.) Adam and Eve marry and have a family, including a son named Seth. They are sealed as a family in about 1860, during their lifetimes. Adam dies. After spiritual promptings, Eve has her younger sister, Jane, sealed to Adam as a wife. Jane had died as a young girl, did not marry during her lifetime.
Family Tree shows that Adam has two wives, Eve and Jane, and Seth as a child of both wives. I delete Seth from the relationship to Jane. I delete the marriage relationship between Adam and Jane. Now Adam and Jane show as a couple with no marriage date. Now Seth shows as a son of Adam and no mother, as well as a son of Adam and Eve. I try to attach Eve as the mother in the record with no mother, but get a message that the relationship is already there and can't be duplicated.
What to do? What to do?0 -
Jade said: From Adam's page or Seth's page, mouseover the link next to Seth under Adam-with-no-wife. Click to "view," and use the link at far right of the relationship page to separate Seth from Adam-with-no-wife. Then Seth will show only as child of Adam-and-Eve, and the box with Adam-with-no-wife will disappear.
Remember, computers are stupid, and the "no-wife" exists in its electron patterns as an entity until you remove reason for its existence. This is a version of the 'safety hold' you ran into before. This change will not remove Seth as child of Adam-and-Eve.
Good luck to you with getting experience in this program's logic!0 -
Cathy Anderegg said: Could he also just use the Change Mother option in the parent-child relationship to the correct wife? I think that works about as slick as anything on FT.0
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Venitar said: OK! That was way too easy!! I think I'm beginning to get it. If I remove Seth from his relationship to Adam on an incorrect record, it does not effect his relationship on the correct record. Right?0
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Cathy Anderegg said: You could also get the ID # for the correct wife and put her in where no wife exists. I think it automatically puts both records together.0
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Venitar said: Next scenario: The problems with one child (Seth) have been cleaned up. Now, on Seth's page, Adam and Eve show as his parents, and his siblings are shown as well - twice, one set above the other. One list of siblings is accurate. The other list has duplicate children, and children not of the family. Do I delete the parent relationship, then do the "Seth Procedure" with each child until the whole second version is gone? Or is there another way?0
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Cathy Anderegg said: You would definitely benefit from taking the tutorials on Deleting Relationships at familysearchtraining.com where this is laid out very clearly. You must first delete the children from a couple before you can delete a couple relationship. When you have two children, and you want to delete one, make sure you keep the one with the most information which is correct. Also make sure the child you delete doesn't have relationships to a spouse or children that will also be deleted (hidden). Also make sure that the child is NOT BOLDED. If you delete a name that is bolded you might also just be deleting the entire family. Sometimes you may want to do this, but more than likely not. If two children are the same and both bolded, then it won't matter if you delete one. The other will remain. But really, please go view those tutorials before you go too much further. There are also some pretty good tutorials on the Help Center, Self Help Ask a Question default page, under Family Tree. (I don't know who thought this was going to be a lot easier than nFS especially for novice users. It certainly doesn't feel like it when you get to Deleting Relationships, does it.)0
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Jade said: Cathy, Venitar had already established a marriage for Adam and Eve, and put Seth as their child, removed Jane as Seth's mother, then separated Adam and Jane. The result was that Seth was shown as son both of Adam/Eve and Adam/no-name. She tried substituting Eve for no-name but the system would not allow duplication of the Adam/Eve relationship or duplicating Eve as mother of Seth for a 2nd time. If Venitar had been aware that her actual sequence of actions would leave a place-holder nameless mother for Seth, she could have first substituted Eve as mother of Seth (replacing Jane, using the hidden "change" function) -- but it takes some practice to figure out what the little FS-FT system does.
It would really help if the links were not hidden behind a mouseover, were well identified as to what they went to, and were not hidden options behind a click-on-a-name. One should not have to read a 130-page manual to find these things.0 -
Cathy Anderegg said: Instead of Adoptive parent, don't you mean Step parent?0
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Cathy Anderegg said: Boy do I agree with your last statements. Why hide actions that need to be taken?0
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Jade said: Ah, Venitar, you have succeeded in finding one of the crucial weaknesses in FS-FT.
To get the family you are working on in shape, you would like to merge duplicate individuals. This function does not exist yet in FS-FT.
What I have done in this situation is move all duplicates to the parents they belong with and to the spouse they belong with (picking one of several duplicates to be the 'prime' version, when necessary, and it almost always is necessary). Then when the merge function is available it will be fairly easy to locate the duplicates since they'll all be together. Then I put the prime version of the individuals on my 'watch' list, which is essentially a "these need work" list for me. Sometimes when I have had to do a lot of surgery to isolate individuals who need to be merged *into* a prime version, I will write a note in "Discussion" about what I did so I don't have to go back and check what needs to be done.
For the time being, I also leave incorrect children in a family if I can't figure out a place they belong in. I found such a child yesterday, who is not attached to anyone by marriage -- just to wrong parents, with not even any dates or places for her. If she were an actual person she would have been born in the 3rd quarter of the 1700s, so there is no issue with her being 'living.' Since I have no idea what the submitter's intention was for this person and her origin is totally obscure, I left her with the wrong parents pending ability to delete her. The Delete Person function also is not yet available in FS-FT
If you just remove children from wrong parents they will be system floaters if no spouse or children are attached to them that might enable someone to figure out what parents they belong with.
As you are finding, a lot of looking-into-background-info is required for working with this system.0 -
Venitar said: Good suggestion, Cathy. I have taken all of the tutorials. They are very well done, but, of necessity, they show how to deal with the simplest situations. You mentioned several of the things that one has to be aware of before messing with relationships. In the case described above, if I were working with it in nFS, it would be a matter of separating and combining records, for one individual at a time, until I make sure that all of the data, ordinance information, and relationships in the family were correct. I don't know how to deal with a problem this complex in Family Tree, yet. There will be several similar situations in my personal ancestry.0
This discussion has been closed.